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The problem with letting users choose the view is that the chosen view affects how they write. If I can see it's obvious in my tree view who I'm responding to,
by JasonFruit 4y ago
The problem with letting users choose the view is that the chosen view affects how they write. If I can see it's obvious in my tree view who I'm responding to, I won't point it out, and then someone who uses the firehose view won't be able to follow the conversation.
- taink 4y agoI feel the main problem wouldn't be this (if you handle quotes to show in a tree view then surely you can handle replies in a tree view to show quotes in a firehose). However, the main issue is that when you can quote multiple comments (when you are in a firehose view) you tend to send a single post for multiple replies; I have no idea how that could be shown in the tree view. Essentially a firehose is a superset of a tree structure, if your unit is a post.
- MetaWhirledPeas 4y agoThere's really two concepts: parent, which is how hierarchy is achieved, and quotes, which are stylized text linking back to an ancestor. The potential for problems would arise when everyone Replied using a root-level post to the firehose. This could be mitigated with prominent Reply links on every post in the firehose, with the root-level contribution form deemphasized. So you can quote multiple people but you still chose a parent by choosing which Reply link to click.
- iggldiggl 4y ago> then surely you can handle replies in a tree view to show quotes in a firehose One problem is that when people are manually quoting a post, they can edit that quote down to only include the relevant portion of the post they're replying to, and depending on the forum culture unnecessary full-quoting is actively being discouraged. Automatically added quotes on the other hand don't have such a luxury, so you'd get a big bunch of full quotes, which wouldn't really be ideal, either.